My take on Delta Green: Need to Know (the free Quickstart), as a CoC7-first GM who likes Trail’s clue ethos and isn’t into heavy metacurrencies.
The engine works for me. It’s classic roll-under percentile with familiar BRP stats/skills, so the table friction is about the same as CoC7. Checks are clean, sample damage is intuitive (pistol 1d10, rifle 1d12, etc.), and you can run straight out of the booklet.
Don’t stall the mystery – like Trail but less baked into the system with rules. The Handler section tells you to present clues and not let a missed detail stall play; the example of play models asking for rolls only when it matters. About the same as CoC7.
Bonds + Breaking Points are neat. You can “project” SAN loss onto a Bond by spending 1d4 Willpower; reducing the hit now, scarring that relationship later. It’s fast at the table and nails the game’s theme: you save the world by spending your life. It’s not a cinematic metacurrency like Momentum/Luck; Willpower here gates resilience, sleep/exhaustion, resisting pressure, and rituals
Adaptation makes the moral slide mechanical. If you take SAN hits from Violence/Helplessness three times without going insane, you become adapted: those SAN tests auto-succeed from then on but you permanently lose CHA (and Bond points) or POW. Agents grow effective and empty at the same time. It’s grim and I like it.
Modern lethality without rule-bloat. Body armor matters, armor-piercing matters, and “Lethality” on heavy weapons can just kill you, with blast “Kill Radius” rules that are one page, tops. It feels tactical and deadly but still quick to adjudicate.
The included operation (“Last Things Last”) looks like a good intro. I can see me running this as a one-shot.
Comparing it to other Cthulhu games: No table-driving meta-economy. DG’s Willpower exists, but it’s there to cope, not to “buy narrative wins.” There isn’t a formal “Core Clue” rule. The intent is there (don’t stall the game), but you still decide when to roll vs. just reveal, so Handler discipline matters.
Long-term play questions. The game wants to wreck home life. Projection scars Bonds by design; there’s also explicit “Bonding with Delta Green” that cannibalizes other Bonds after traumatic ops. That’s the intended tone. The slide into Adaptation is powerful and punishing (auto-success vs. Violence/Helplessness at the cost of CHA/POW and Bond erosion). I like it but wonder about long-term play of “dead inside” agents with no connections. Kinda loses the impact?
Gunfights can be swingy…. and short thanks to Lethality/armor interactions. Given it seems core to the agent identity, may mean abrupt endings?
I’m tempted to run it. It reads like it will play like CoC7 in the moment-to-moment (percentile clarity), borrows the right lesson from Trail (no clue bottlenecks), and then adds a uniquely modern-conspiracy layer that gives me a X-Files vibe.
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